Emotions Flashcards
Lecture 7
Define emotion
There is still no real agreed upon definition and there is a long history of people thinking it is not ‘scientific’.
Common definitions of emotion:
- An affective, feeling state that is specific (moods are broader and more general).
- The conscious awareness of this feeling state (but not everyone agrees on this).
- The affect/feeling contributes to a particular goal or behaviour.
What shapes emotions?: cognitive appraisals
Cognitive appraisals: how we appraise the situation helps our emotional experiences (different appraisals are linked to different emotions).
Situations are appraised by these dimensions:
- Pleasure (valence).
- Control (am I in control of my surroundings).
- Certainty (am I certain about what is happening to me).
- Arousal (how strong is this emotion).
- Legitimacy (how fair is what is happening).
These appraisals help us determine our emotional experiences (emotions are adaptive and help us deal with environment).
How do appraisals influence emotions?
Interest/happiness: situation - low effort, highly pleasant, situation is under control.
Surprise: situation - low effort, highly pleasant, situation is uncertain.
Shame/guilt: situation - highly unpleasant, highly effortful, fairly uncertain, self-blame is high.
Fear: situation - highly unpleasant, highly uncertain, highly effortful, others in control.
(Ellsworth and Smith, 1985).
Example:
- At a first date, you appraise the situation as somewhat uncertain.
- You appraise the situation as somewhat out of your own control -> you feel anxious and maybe a little fearful.
- Things go well though -> still feel a little uncertain about where it might lead, but in a pleasant way -> you feel happy, somewhat anxious still, but also excited.
- If you appraised the situation differently, you would feel different emotions for instance, believing the data is controllable would lower anxiety/fear.
What shapes emotion?: somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio, 1994)
- Past sensory experiences (including emotions) become stored/marked in our brains in association with specific events/situations.
- Whenever that experience/situations occurs over time, the brain triggers those same emotional experiences.
- Eventually, the mere thought of the experience triggers an emotional/affective response.
- It will occur automatically, and outside of consciousness (initially at least), even in cases where similiar things occur to the original.
So basically, our past experiences help shape our current emotional experiences.
Example:
- In the past, a dog bit you -> you will feel fear and anxiety. The experience paired in your brain with this emotion.
- In the past, a dog hasn’t done anything awful to you -> you will feel either nothing or a sense of joy (depending on if past experiences were pleasant or neutral).
Cultural influences on emotion
Culture influences what elicits certain emotions e.g. disgust at eating dog.
Culture influences how frequently emotions are felt and emotional intensity, e.g. shame is more felt in Asian cultures, and they rate it as more intense.
Cultures influences what we feel -> western cultures prefer high energy emotions more than other cultures (Tsai, 2007).
Culture impacts how emotion should be expressed:
- This often differs by gender.
- Death is celebrated in some cultures; in others you are looked at very strangely if you “have fun” at funerals.
What is the James-Lange Hypothesis?
Propose that we feel because we act - actions can influence our emotions.
Studies shown that when placing a pencil between your teeth (like smiling), comics are rated as more humourous.
How does emotion link to self?
We identify ourselves based on our behaviours (in part).
We also feel based on our behaviours (in part) - “I am smiling so this is funny”.
We also hold attitudes because of our behaviours -> liking a person is increased by helping them.
The role of evolution on emotions
Digust:
- Evolved to faciliate the avoidance of dangerous disease-causing pathogens.
- (and the avoidance of the people who may have them, which we are more likely to presume in foreigners).
Anger:
- Evolved to facilitate fighting and conflict.
- Motivates approach to conflict.
Guilyt/shame:
- Evolved as a signal to group members that you feel bad for your actions.
- Evolved to keep group members from harming each other.
Sadness:
- Evolved as a means by which “weaker” members of a group can protect themselves from attacks singalling a lack of threat.
- Also facilitates specific problem solving by slpwing down the brain system.
- Also may have evolved to help restore/maintain energy.
Fear:
- Evolved to quickly facilitate avoidance and fleeing of dangers.
Emotion and moral judgment
Social vs private conclusions: immoral judgment either way, but perhaps you express that differently based on who is around.
Role of gut-level evaluations vs reasoning: does it really matter if you have good reasons? The feeling drives the judgment.
Disgust and “social contagion”:
- Disgust by association of person talking about disgust.
- Research shows that people have a desire to clean and wash hands after moral violations.
Outline Haidt’s Social Intuitionist Model (2001)
People tend to think that reason/rational thought underlies moral decision making.
But, (often) a better predictor of moral judgements are people’s automatic, gut-level impressions (including emotions) of somethign.
People feel something, this shapes the moral judgement, then post hoc reasons are developed to justify that feeling.
Support:
1. Emotions when primed beneath consciousness still elicit moral defensiveness (Wheatley and Haidt, 2005) - emotions in general strongly predict moral judgements.
2. People still evaluate moral situations as ‘immoral’ even when their reasons are explained away (Haidt, 2001).
The role of digust and anger in moral judgement and how this is intergrated with the social intuitionist model
Anger is inflexible, but disgust is nearly impossible to “explain away”.
Anger is a response to moral violatons that involve harming others.
Disgust is a response to “taboo” moral violations, even if they are harmless -> though people presume harm anyway.
When you block post-hoc reasoning, people no longer presume harm, but they still think it is immoral.
Integration with social intuitionist model:
If we have an initial reaction of anger or disgust, it is going to very likely lead to the impression of moral wrongness.
This is going to be extremely difficult to change even when people are consciously feeling and thinking about their anger and digust -> it may even lead to more moral certainty.
People tend to presume functions of harm post-hoc to justify their moral judgements of olthers (but even when these are blocked, people persist with their initial judgement).
Limits of Haidt’s model
- Reasons clearly have an impact on moral judgements in some studies. It can’t all be gut feelings, i.e. providing mitigating circumstances reduces moral harshness (e.g. Russell and Giner-Sorolla, 2010).
- Can you ever really totally eliminate people’s concerns over a perceived moral violation? (i.e. if researchers give a list of mitigating factors, do these eliminate concerns of participants).
- More a critique of the research so far than his model, but emotions are not the same as automatic gut-level impressions.
What is the persuit of happiness?
Lyubomrisky’s research shows that happiness:
- about 50% genetic.
- about 40% intentional actions.
- about 10% circumstances.
These things have been found to increase happiness:
- A fit between your actons and your desires (or your needs).
- Intrinsically pursuing things.
- Practicsing gratitude.
- Exploring novelty (in small ways; too much causes anxiety) -> discuss happiness set point and novelty wearing off.
- Seeing the “silver lining”.
- Pursing meaningful activity.
- Exercise.
Positive emotions and Fredrickson’s “Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotion”
Fredrickson has proposed the “broaden and build” theory of positive emotion.
Positive emotions expand people’s thought repertoire.
Positive emotions encourage novelty, exploration and varied thought.
Lots of support for this theory -> positive emotions are also typically better for physical health.
Some studies show that religion improves health by increasing positive affect (in contrast to the idea that people believe/practice out of fear/anxiety).
Fredrickson’s theory:
1. Negative emotion narrows focus and thoughts: positive emotion does the opposite (it broadens the mind and makes you think you have more options).
2. Positive emotion is stored as a “defence” against future threats (it builds resources) -> 9/11 study (those who coped best had positive emotions to offset the negative; they didn’t have less negative emotions.
Evidence:
Positive emotion broadens:
- More creativity, more novelty seeking, more behavioural choices come to mind.
- Longer list of what you want to do well, and that you want to be able to do at all.
Positive emotion builds:
- It undoes negative emotion (9/11 study).
- Participants are stressed in studies (like a speech):
- Those who when are put in a good mood after that show reduced stress response; their heart rate literally recovered quicker.
- Even rats recover from stress better and learn better when they have “rat friends”.
Implications:
- Two people feel down.
The one experiencing more positive mood recently will tend to:
1. Show a quickened reduction of the negative mood (sort of like a medicine).
2. Be able to think of more options and feel less trapped (broaden thoughts).
Consequences of suppressing emotions
A whole load of research shows that avoiding/suppressing negative emotions can have very negative consequences.
- Suppressing tends to intensify negative emotions (Dalgleish et al., 2009).
- Suppressing increases cardiovascular stress responses and impairs memory (Richards & Gross, 1999).
- High emotional suppressors live shorter lives (Chapman et al., 2013).
